


Stronger Together

by TheSmallestStar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, CPS, Gen, POV Outsider, john's dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 15:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2393429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSmallestStar/pseuds/TheSmallestStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their daddy died sudden and violent, the matron says when Leah asks her. Sudden and violent on the highway, and Sam and Dean watched the whole thing. Their Mama died when they were just little, and the matron says their daddy went a little crazy, dragging them across the country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stronger Together

Leah’s seen a lot in her time. A lot of stuff that nobody should ever have to see, a lot of stuff that shouldn’t ever exist. She’s seen nearly all of it in her nearly eighteen years in the system, and has categorized everything that could land a kid up where she is.

The new boys are definitely in the recent-trauma category; they’ve got the empty, bricked-up look in their eyes that she’s seen too many times. But there’s something different about them too, and that alone is enough to make her look just a little closer. Close enough to see that these boys, these brothers, seem to have their own language, made up of looks and touches and a soul-deep understanding of each other.

Their daddy died sudden and violent, the matron says when Leah asks her. Sudden and violent on the highway, and Sam and Dean watched the whole thing. Their Mama died when they were just little, and the matron says their daddy went a little crazy, dragging them across the country.

After that, Leah notices things. Like the way that the little floppy-haired one is like the older one’s shadow, never more than half a step behind. As though he had learned to walk holding onto his brother’s sleeve and nobody ever taught him that he didn’t need to walk that close anymore. Like how, when she goes downstairs in the middle of the night to get water, they will always be curled up together on the same bed, even there are two perfectly good ones in each room. As though they had never even thought about being so far away from each other. Like the calculating way the older one looks at everyone, all the time with his fingers tapping quickly away on the little one’s shoulder in what she learns to recognise as their own version of Morse.

Leah even tried to learn Morse, to see what they could be saying, but it’s too hard and she gives up after ten minutes.

The boys never leave the home. Maybe it’s the trauma, or the closeness, or the silence that puts foster parents off, but they grow up without going to a single foster house. Leah graduates, ages out and stays at the home as a matron, and the boys keep growing up. The older one starts talking more, even cracking jokes on occasion. The little one still doesn’t talk to anyone but his brother. The older one shoots up until he towers over his brother, but they still sleep in the same bed.

Sometimes Leah wonders if she should stop them, before realising that it would be a stupid idea. They’ve started to build their own version of normal. They’ll never lose the closeness, but some things will probably fix themselves in time.

There’s always the something other about them. Leah never manages to figure it out.

When Dean ages out, they both disappear overnight. The morning of his 18th birthday, Leah goes to get them up for school to find that they have both disappeared, no clothes left, Sam’s book gone, Dean’s jacket not on the peg behind the door.

It’s funny, but as she calls the police and lets them know, she can’t help feeling that it was inevitable, and that she was surprised that they waited that long. They had never really been at the home.

The Head Matron looks confused for just a second when Leah tells her, as though she can’t quite remember their faces.

A week after they disappeared, the police let Leah know that while the search is ongoing, chances of finding the boys are slim. The trail is stone-cold. Somebody taught them how to hide, the officer says, somebody taught them how to run. Leah shrugs and nods. She’s not all too worried about them. Dean knows exactly how to keep them safe. It was probably their daddy that taught him that.

But after the officer has left, she digs around in her drawer and pulls out an old photo from a thick file holding all the photos of the kids. It was taken at the school a year or so after Sam and Dean arrived, a school that take photos every year and have ones with siblings.

They’re sitting on a bench, but Sam’s got a booster so that he’s closer to Dean’s height. Dean has one arm around Sam’s shoulders, and they’re both staring at the camera. Not smiling. Just staring, with that same, empty, protected stare that she’s never seen them without.

Somehow, Leah knows, as she puts the photo on her desk, that the look probably goes away when it’s just the two of them, with nobody else around.

They were never really at the home. They were always just _together_ , as though that was the only place that it mattered to be.

Leah never does see or hear of Sam and Dean again.


End file.
